


Everlasting

by ElvenSorceress



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Ghosts, M/M, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvenSorceress/pseuds/ElvenSorceress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ragnar longs for his ever after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everlasting

**Author's Note:**

> * SPOILER: Yes, I know Rollo doesn't return with them and he and Gisla will eventually be singing Normandy ala Matthew Morrison and Zooey Deschanel, but I liked his tiny part in this so I kept it. 
> 
> * I purposefully left out Floki because who the heck knows what is going to happen there, and it wouldn't affect Ragnar's story here. The damage was done and all of that.

__

_take my hand, I'll lead you to salvation. take my love, for love is everlasting_

 

Under the cover of darkness, Paris glows. The lights are small but they’re joined by the moon and stars who seem to favor the magnificent, towering city of stone and marble. The air is warm and fragrant and wraps around him like a cloak. 

If he could breathe deeply, he’d fill his lungs and taste the sweetness in the air. Beyond the walls, there will be handsome, thoughtful, interesting people perhaps ones who like questioning, imagining, dreaming. 

It’s a prize. A treasure like no other. A treasure just like any other. 

There are things bright and kind and brilliant, full of light and worth more than all the gold, silver, and riches in the world. 

At least, there were. 

He should have died in Paris at the crest of its impregnable walls. But he died in the middle of the night in a humble lodging in Kattegat. Mere strides from his own bedchamber.

Though he has no home to return to, he can't remain in Paris.

He’d promised. He promised to protect and he failed. How could he have lost the one thing that means anything? 

His children are still alive. Most of them. They mean something. But they don’t need him. He’s no longer the father they loved. 

They want him to play with them as he always has and he can’t. There’s no heart beating in his chest. No light left in his body. He’ll bleed if he’s touched the wrong way. He’s still too weak and too broken, and he doesn’t know why death has yet to claim him.

His sons worry and the younger boys cry and all he can do is hold them as if they’re thin shards of ice. 

The older boys ask about the weight of gold hanging around his neck, hovering over his heart. They don’t understand and he hasn’t the words to sufficiently explain. But he tells them he thinks it’s possible to love both the Allfather and Christ god. Perhaps if they remember, it will mean that he won’t fail them, too. 

Their mother tells him she knows why his heart aches. She knows why he’s broken and it wasn’t from a fall. But she can’t heal his wounds and he doesn’t want her to try. 

He leaves her with the hall, the lush furnishings, the feasts, and all attendants fitting for royalty. They’re what make her happy. 

He sleeps in the forest where everything is green and the rush and crash of a waterfall can lull him away from this world. 

In his dreams, light exists. 

Beautiful laughter, fierce intelligence, a man made of strength that far surpassed his own. And yet that same man is one of gentleness, unrivaled sincerity and kindness. 

Was. Is. He doesn’t know which. But when a hand bearing a round, ragged scar rests on his chest and dark hair spills over his arm and there’s a warm, tiny man curled against his body… his heart beats. 

The touches are too faint, too fleeting, and when he wakes, he’s just in a forest, sleeping on the damp, green ground near a cross of twine and branches. 

“Why do you leave me? Why do you abandon me?” he demands to the sky, the wind, the trees, the water. “There is nothing but pain without you.”

The world whispers back to him and it sounds like the sweet voice he so loves. “I would never abandon you. I'm with you and always will be.” Something rests on his stomach where it churns and twists and then on his chest where his lungs have no room to bring him air. It makes his pain recede and he can breathe and move more easily. “Is that better?”

If he tries hard enough, he can see the man who soothes him. But something deep within him is still torn and broken, and that ache is unbearable. “No. I think I feel the soul inside me. It’s been sliced and split like firewood. The pain in my body cannot compare.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I cannot ease that pain.” A wave of warm light wraps itself around him, so close, so almost with him, but it’s nothing he can hold onto. “I feel it, too. Where I was ripped away from you.”

Fiery protectiveness rages in his chest. “Even now? Does it hurt you?”

“Yes. But it won’t always. We’ll be together someday.”

“Tell me. What will happen. When I get to see you.”

“Again?” Athelstan’s smile is so vivid, he can feel it, if not see it. 

“Please.” 

The warmth moves, resettles itself, and he thinks of his gentle, sweet friend stretching out on top of him, listening to the beat of his broken heart. “I will take you in my arms and never let go. And we’ll follow the stars and live at the beginning, the first light of morning, where the worries of the day do not matter and the night can never touch us.” 

He closes his eyes and feels lips whisper soft against his cheek. 

“We’ll make love for centuries and talk about everything in the history and future of the world. We’ll never have to be without each other.” 

The promise gives him enough strength to face the cold world that no longer has light. 

They tell him they must return to England and are horrified he doesn’t care about their settlement being destroyed and their people massacred. It's not that he doesn’t; it’s that he can’t. 

He might want to, but the ability was stolen from him. And he makes it known to all of them exactly why there is nothing in him any longer that might make him softer or kinder. 

They let all of it happen. It could have been any one of them. Even if he does know exactly who. They're all at fault. 

His brother mentions his own dead lover without managing to say her name and his ex-wife speaks of her love for the priest. But neither of them compare. They don’t know the depth of his wounds. 

They can’t understand how the thought of never seeing heaven tortures him. He seethes at them and promises he will fight Odin himself if he is taken from his chance at heaven. 

They insist on a return to Wessex, for revenge if nothing else. Since they’ll do whatever they please whether he agrees or not, he leaves them to it. They can go without him. 

The only time he’s seen either of them more shocked was when he stood with a holy man of Paris and asked to be washed in the water of Christian forgiveness. 

It’s his eldest who speaks of a slave who is now a free woman and how his heart aches from her absence who convinces him to join them. Perhaps he’ll die in a bloody battle with the Saxons. He can hope at the very least. 

When he has no such fortune, he stands before their king who laughs because there’s a cross hanging from his neck. Until he looks closer at the pendant. Then his laugh fades and his voice wavers. 

_Why are you wearing that?_

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. Because this king is not a stupid man. 

He turns sallow and sickly, like he’s been gutted. _How? When? What happened?_

Ragnar shakes his head because he can’t. It’s a nightmare he can’t wake from — finding a body crumpled and cold on the dusty ground, blood seeping into the earth, blood all over his own hands because he couldn’t return it to the body it belonged in. 

His sweet, beautiful Athelstan. He was supposed to be alive and smiling bright enough to blind all the gods. He was supposed to tell stories and teach him languages and laugh breathlessly when a beard tickled his neck and nestle closer even when the furs and blankets provided enough warmth. 

He gives the only explanation he can. _Murdered._

The king places a hand on his shoulder but looks behind him to a woman with dark hair and large, fearful eyes. She shakes her head and her eyes turn to rivers. 

Maybe their return was a good plan after all. At least people here understand.

 _No,_ she says. _No, no._ And protectively clutches the child in her arms. 

A child. He forgets to breathe.

The king turns to her, wraps an arm around her, and gently takes the child. _He will be my heir. His name is Alfred._ The king pauses for a moment, looking wary, but hands the toddler to him.

The child has a head full of dark curls and bright eyes like a sunny sky. He’s small and delicate but gazes without fear or revulsion. His eyes are inquisitive and the same clear shade of blue. 

_Hello, prince,_ Ragnar whispers with words he was taught. 

The boy smiles. _Hello._

If he had a heart, it would melted like the longest winter. 

_Do not be sad._ Little arms come around Ragnar’s shoulders and the boy rests his head on them, hugging tightly.

Flutters awaken in Ragnar’s chest and he wants to cry just like the boy’s mother. His son will surely be kind and intelligent, generous, peaceful, fierce and loyal. It would be impossible for him to be anything else. 

If only he could have been here. If only he would have known. 

He probably would have chosen to stay forever this time. Maybe then he would have been safe. The thought brings darkness, stillness back to him, and he hands the child back to his mother. There’s no choice to be made any longer. 

When word is sent to him that the king’s grandson has been kidnapped, Ragnar knows what the game is. It’s obvious and everyone still warns him. But he’ll play nonetheless because there’s no reason not to. 

The air is thicker in Northumbria, full of clouds and rain and the crackles of immortal power. The king there thinks he’s won. He’s finally gotten his revenge. 

_Did you truly believe I would harm my own grandson?_ He sneers, gloating as if he’s finally bested the king of the Northmen. 

But Ragnar wants to thank him. _No._ He never believed a word from any of them. Their words don’t matter. Their threats don’t matter. 

They drag him outside anyway. The sky bursts with lightning and the earth shakes from the crashes of thunder. He doesn’t fight being thrown to the serpents. He’ll take Thor’s death. At least it will earn him Valhalla, if not heaven. 

He clutches the cross of gold in one hand and offers the other to the snakes. For as long as he can, he’ll hold on to Athelstan. 

There’s no pain because there could never be anything worse than what he’s already had to endure. What he’ll have to endure if the Christian god rejects him. 

When he closes his eyes, something drifts over the hand he gave to the snakes. A hand. Someone taking hold, weaving fingers through his and he squeezes tightly, whispering prayers to all gods that he'll no longer have to be alone. 

When he looks, the light that was taken from him is shining all around him. Athelstan is smiling at him. 

His face is unblemished and smooth like a priest but his hair loose, braided in parts and touching just below his shoulders. His tunic is a deep blue-green and low and embroidered at the neck. He’s bright and golden, the most beautiful thing Ragnar's ever seen. But that was always true.

Ragnar squeezes tighter and the feel of a hand in his doesn’t disappear. “Are we in heaven? Did your god accept me?”

Athelstan brings his free hand to Ragnar’s chest and rests it over the cross that was his. “Heaven and Valhalla are not as different as either of us believed.”

Furrows wrinkle Ragnar’s forehead and he wonders what he looks like now. “What does that mean?”

“I’ll show you what it means.” Athelstan grins and steps to his side. 

Silhouettes appear in the light around them, warriors without weapons, and he thinks he knows all those smiling faces, but it’s the quick little one who sprints to him and jumps in his arms that makes him realize. 

He falls to his knees and weeps, but she just laughs and hugs him tightly. His sweet, beautiful daughter who never got to grow up. “Gyda.” He cradles her head and refuses to let her go even as his friends crowd around them to welcome him. Torstein hugs them and Arne claps him on the back, Siggy kisses his cheek and Leif playfully punches his arm. All his friends, all the people he ever loved and who loved him. 

He turns back and Athelstan smiles softly, separate from the crowd. He sets Gyda down but she follows as he strides forward and crushes Athelstan in his arms, lifting him and burying his face in the fall of soft brown hair. “I would still have chosen you,” he whispers and means it with his whole being. 

Something like breath stutters in Athelstan’s chest and he grips Ragnar just as hard. “I would have chosen you, too. I would have loved to see him and know him and teach him. But I never could have left you.”

Ragnar sets him down, but doesn't let go. “You were going to.”

“I thought it would be better. I thought you might not want me to stay.” His eyes shimmer and all Ragnar wants to do is hold him and ensure sadness never touches his face again. Athelstan runs a hand over Ragnar’s chest, leaving warmth and joy in its wake. “I knew the depth of my love for you. It wasn’t until after I was gone that I realized the depth of your love for me.”

He caresses Ragnar’s cheek and that’s all the separation Ragnar can tolerate. He cups Athelstan’s face, tangling fingers in his hair as he brings their mouths together, powerful enough to topple cities. 

Athelstan grins against his lips, returning his kiss with all the force of his mighty heart.


End file.
